Page 3

I try to adjust, but I can’t lift my head more than an inch. I haven’t been this bad in years.

Seeing my struggle, Faos sighs and crouches beside me, cradling my head in the palm of his hand. He tips the mug slowly so a swig of Oil can fill my mouth.

I am an eager addict, swallowing down the first drop, then the next. Relief floods through me. It’ll take a quarter hour if not more for the drug to make its way through my body and for the effects to reach my joints, but at least there’s a countdown. At least I’m not dead.

Not for the first time, I wonder why my brother didn’t just kill me. I’m of no use to him, with or without a heart. It could be argued I’m more of a detriment without the heart.

And yet, here I am, still breathing.

“He gone?” I ask when Faos rocks back on his heels.

The air still smells of blood and magic, but there’s a stillness that does not belong to the Wizard. Where he goes, the air snaps.

“Yes,” Faos answers. “He took the golden mask, and I anticipate he’ll take control of the flock soon enough. I won’t have much time.”

“I’m going to get it back.”

Faos snorts. “You have other things to worry about.”

“He’ll use you and the flock for his own means.”

“Of course he will.”

I manage to pull myself up onto my forearms and crane my neck.

The girl, Dorothy, is still lying in a pool of her own blood.

I should have known she was important when the witch sent me after her. The fact that she’s dead tells me the Wizard knew she was a threat. She killed two Cardinal Witches, made water from nothing and burned no source to do it as far as I could tell.

“Why did he kill her?” I ask Faos. “What do you know?”

The commander sets the mug of Oil aside and reaches into his leather breastplate. “She’s not dead.”

I look at her again. She’s as still as a corpse and is the color of one too.

The monkey pulls out a familiar tin box. My dosing kit.

“Faos—”

He sets the kit by my side.

“If she’s not dead, she will be any second. Help her.”

I don’t know why I’m suddenly demanding the commander of the flock save a mortal girl who I’ve only just met and who I can tell already is a pain in the ass. She’s stubborn, mouthy, and in complete denial about her power. Two of those things are an annoyance, the third thing is a risk to anyone in her orbit.

But there is a nagging feeling in the back of my mind. A mystery unfurling, limned in greed. And I am a greedy bastard. Because maybe her power is one I can use against my brother.

“I can’t help her,” Faos tells me.

“Why not?”

“I don’t have that kind of magic.”

Healing magic, he means. Or something bigger.

“Give her a small dose of Oil. It might be enough to keep her heart pumping till I can patch her up.”

“She won’t need that.”